It’s widely recognized that customer service is a crucial element for achieving small business success. No matter what industry you are in, providing an excellent customer experience will help you build brand loyalty and beat the competition.
On the other hand, bad customer service can be devastating to your company’s sales and reputation. With so many other options for customers and clients to choose from, they’ll simply take their business elsewhere.
Below are some pro tips for improving your small business customer service.
1. Build Rapport with Your Customers.
“Your client base is likely smaller than a Fortune 500 company where customers are just a number. As a small business owner, you have a real opportunity to personalize the customer experience. Regularly reaching out to your customers, getting to know them by name, and remembering faces will make all interactions with your business more memorable and will make your customers feel valued.”
Source: BenchmarkONE
2. Know Your Product Inside Out for the Best Customer Service.
“Customers appreciate seeing that they can count on you to answer questions about the products you make or the services you provide. If you can’t speak knowledgeably about your products, you won’t be able to help your customers and you’ll lose their trust. On the flip side, the more product knowledge you can provide, the easier time you’ll have to provide positive customer experiences.
One brand that best illustrates this concept comes from Apple and the Genius Bar found at its stores, where nearly all customers’ problems with iPhones and Macbooks can be handled by the company’s team of customer support experts.”
Source: Small Business Trends
3. Provide Fast, Convenient Customer Support.
“When consumers bump into a problem with your products/services or have a question about your brand nowadays, they expect you to offer a quick, decent response. Think about it – people today don’t usually get to enjoy a lot of free time. Thus, having to spend even half an hour dealing with customer support can seriously harm customer satisfaction levels.
Speculations aside, though, the research backs up this claim. According to Forrester, 73% of online adults in the US claim that the best thing a brand can do to offer them great customer support is to ‘value their time.'”
Source: Retently
4. Treat Customers with Respect.
“Customers want to feel valued and appreciated. They don’t want to be spoken down to or ignored. When you’re providing customer service, make sure you are respectful and use a polite and helpful tone.”
Source: Forbes
5. Craft the Type of Team Your Company Needs.
“To give a deep understanding of how to react to different situations, it’s necessary to properly train your employees. Customer service training is an iterative process of teaching the skills required to serve customers better.
Investing in customer service training shows employees the company cares about them as well as their progress and development. Apart from gaining appropriate skills to deal with customer issues, they also become more engaged with the organization. Improvement in the quality of customer service will definitely enhance customer satisfaction, retention rate, and in turn, loyalty.”
Source: EngageBay
6. Make Collecting Customer Feedback Easy.
“The key to improving your customer service and growing your business is to learn about the good, the bad, and the ugly experience your customers have faced. Even though you might have accounted for every customer issue as part of your customer service experience strategy, you may face difficulty in streamlining the workflow. The best thing your customer support agents can do is create multiple touchpoints along the customer journey to encourage customer feedback.”
Source: Freshworks
At First Union Lending, we want to help you amp up your business customer service. Be it installing self-service options, improving employee training, or finding better ways to communicate with your customers, we can offer you the funds needed to launch any project.
With lines of credit, short-term loans, and merchant cash advances, among other options, we have the resources to help you. Some clients get funded in as little as two business days! Call us at 863-825-5626 today!